L-R: Colin Blunstone, Rod Argent, Chris White, and Hugh Grundy in a still from Hug Up on a Dream: The Zombies Documentary. Courtesy of Utopia Originals LLC.
Robert Schwartzman and Colin Blunstone recently sat down for a conversation to discuss Hung Up on a Dream: The Zombies Documentary.
The film first premiered during SXSW in 2023, but it was only recently released in theaters. The cut that audiences are seeing now is different from the one that premiered during SXSW.
“We needed to bring the running time down,” Schwartzman said of the cut that premiered two years ago. “It was a little bit long for a doc. That was the biggest thing. It was still finding itself at SXSW but we were still prepared to screen it there. It was nice to have an audience see it and you learn a lot about a movie when you watch it with people.”
Hung Up on a Dream: The Zombies Documentary is the first-ever feature documentary about the band, founded over sixty years ago. The band had met as teenagers prior to the British Invasion of America. They tell their story about navigating the music industry over the decades about making one of the best albums of all time, Odessey and Oracle. Upon releasing “She’s Not There” as a single, they would follow The Beatles as the first British band to reach #1 in America with a self-written song.
Unfortunately, the album didn’t sell all that great in the UK before it became a surprise hit in the US. They didn’t get to have the celebration they deserved when “Time of the Season” became a #1 hit and a global sensation. The film gives the band an opportunity to look back on the journey that led them to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along the shores of Lake Erie in Cleveland, Ohio.
It’s so nice to meet you today. How are you doing?
Colin Blunstone: Good, good. Nice to meet you too.
Robert Schwartzman: This is a special day because it’s night #2 of the LA opening in theaters and I’m gonna be with Colin at the Nuarte, which is really cool. Last night was amazing. So special.
What was the genesis behind the documentary?
Robert Schwartzman: Sometimes when I tell the story of how it all got together, when I talk about it, it doesn’t sound as exciting. I feel like it’s not as interesting, but it’s really just like the way anything starts, which is, you have an idea for something and you feel excited about it. You just don’t want to put it down. You just want to chase it and make it happen. That’s really what I felt. I love The Zombies. I know The Zombies’ music. I’ve been listening to The Zombies for a long time.
I love documentaries. I love music documentaries. I’ve played music and made records for a long time. I’ve made movies. My world is bringing those things together. The best way to do that is when it’s about something that you genuinely feel passionate about.
We made this independently. This wasn’t made for a studio or someone bought the rights and then brought us in or something like that. This was us going, Let’s go make a movie together and Colin and Rod saying, Let’s do it.
Was this a quick yes or did it take some time to get The Zombies on board?
Robert Schwartzman: I had a fight Colin every step of the way.
Colin Blunstone: (Laughs) We had a Zoom conversation, Robert, Rod and I. It quickly became apparent that first of all, Robert comes from a rich film background. He understands film. He’s also an accomplished musician and also is very knowledgeable about The Zombies. From memory, it was quite a short conversation, really. His enthusiasm, knowledge, and expertise made it a very easy decision for us that we really wanted to be involved with him and to make this documentary.
It’s been just over two years since the film premiered at SXSW and the film is finally being released. One, what took so long? And two, were there any changes in the cut that premiered there and the one that’s being released this week?
Robert Schwartzman: Definitely. South by Southwest kind of caught us by surprise because we really were just getting going with the film. It was pretty early days if you look at the life cycle of a documentary, the making of.
Movies take time to make and sometimes things sneak up on you at the last second and you add something. There was a Finneas performance in the movie of Time of the Season that he had put out and we got our hands on that footage and put it in the movie very last minute. It’s those things that happen when a movie takes a minute to get finalized.
You discover new things along the way. You kind of have creative breakthroughs. The more you allow time and things to really work. Even when you’re making an album, you might make a quick adjustment at the very last second to the mood, to the artwork or the music and remix something. It’s never done until it’s really done. I mean, it’s never really done. I’m still like, I watched the movie and you’re still always like, Oh, is it done yet? But I think it’s at this point, it’s out so it’s like, we better be done.
SXSW was longer cut, a lot of stuff in there. We needed to bring the running time down. It was a little bit long for a doc. That was the biggest thing. It was still finding itself at SXSW but we were still prepared to screen it there. It was nice to have an audience see it and you learn a lot about a movie when you watch it with people. Colin sat through the screening yesterday, so Colin went through it with the audience last night.
Colin Blunstone: Absolutely, I did, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. But of course, I haven’t seen it for some time. Robert and I did a question and answer after the show, so I thought I should remind myself. Of course, I remember the documentary quite well, but I just wanted to make sure that I was aware of every detail of the documentary. I sat with the audience last night, watched it, and felt their enthusiasm and excitement as they were watching it. I felt the same thing.
It was great to see it again. I think for me, just on a personal level, it was important to see it again before we put ourselves up on stage and did a question and answer, which was great fun. I mean, there were a lot of questions about it. Sometimes, you can do something like that and no one wants to commit to asking a question. But obviously, there was a lot of interest and a lot of enthusiasm about the documentary. I think we did about 40 minutes or something on the stage, didn’t we? Yeah, it was quite a long time.
Robert Schwartzman: I was thinking to myself, when is this thing going to get called? I thought it was weird. It was like a surreal movie. I felt like we were just going to spend the night in the theater with the audience.
Colin Blunstone: I know, I was wondering if they served breakfast.
Robert Schwartzman: Yeah, exactly.
Colin Blunstone: (Laughs) That was good fun.
When you were watching the film last night, were there times when you wanted to sing along to the music?
Colin Blunstone: Absolutely. I mean, the Zombie songs are like that. They are very sing-alongable. It’s quite interesting because often the top line of Zombie songs is quite simple. It certainly sounds simple anyway, but the music underneath isn’t always simple. It’s quite sophisticated, especially the Rod Argent songs. That’s always intrigued me, how Rod has this ability to write really quite sophisticated music and make it sound simple. That’s so important and often that encourages people to sing along. I’m the same as everyone else. I like to sing along with those songs, even after all these years.
I’ve sung most of them many, many times. But it’s always a thrill to sing those songs. They sound as fresh and as relevant today as they did when they were recorded between 64 and 67. The classics, anyway.
I grew up listening to The Zombies in part because of growing up as a fan of The Beatles and listening to the oldies station. How exciting is it to know that the band is likely to be introduced to newer audiences by way of the documentary?
Colin Blunstone: Well, of course, it is exciting. I would just say that if you came to a Zombies concert, you might be quite surprised that a cross-section of the ages of the audience from teenagers, all the way through to people that have followed our journey from the beginning, the same age as us. People are always taken by surprise with the age range that come to see The Zombies.
But of course, that’s one of the things with music. We want to share our musical experiences with the next generations and hopefully they can take this music on and in time, introduce it to the next generation. That’s a hope that we have for this music.
So far, a lot of this music has lasted 60 years. Who would have ever expected that when we recorded it in the first place? I think like a lot of people in the 60s, I expected to have, if I’m lucky, to have a three or four-year career, and that would be the end of it, then I would get on with the rest of my life. It’s been a wonderful surprise that you can have a lifetime’s career in music. I don’t think many people realized that in the mid 60s.
Do you ever think about what life could have been like had Odessey and Oracle performed better in the UK, before it became this surprise hit in the US?
Colin Blunstone: I do, occasionally. If I have a regret at all, it’s that I would have liked to have known what The Zombies would have done next after Odessey and Oracle. Listen, hindsight’s a wonderful thing. We never got that option of doing the next album, but for us to do the next album, then Odessey and Oracle needed to have been a success at the time. So yeah, it would have been really interesting to know what would have happened next, but that’s not the way it worked out. You have to use your experiences in the best way you can to make your life as good and as full as you can make it.
I have no regrets about the way things worked out. In some ways, you learn a lot more from failure than you do from success. There’ve been lots of ups and downs in The Zombies career and in my career as well. I’ve learned as I’ve gone along, and I’m very happy with where I am in my life now. No regrets about the past, just that one little thing, what might we have done next after Odessey and Oracle, but we’ll never know.
Do you have a favorite studio that you like to record in because of the way it sounds?
Colin Blunstone: Well, certainly. From that era, I think Abbey Road in the UK was head and shoulders above any other studio. I mean, it’s still a wonderful studio. I think from my personal experience, I’m more interested in the engineer than the studios. I want to know who I’m recording with, not where. I think the engineers are really important. For me in my career now, it’s not so important to go into a prestigious studio like Abbey Road. It’s important to work with the right engineers and with the right producer.
I noticed that Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman were listed as executive producers. Did they provide any notes in particular that benefited the film?
Robert Schwartzman: Gary is a great champion of the film. He works with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and is a great music lover, as well as Tom. They formed a company obviously out of really supporting creatives and really loving music.
It was just really cool that Playtone was excited to get involved in the movie. Yeah, I mean, just having them—Gary really was the most in touch with us, but he was very cool to kind of share his sort of positive attitude about our movie and was just there to be a supportive force.
It takes a lot of people to make a movie happen—any movie of any size, it takes a team. To make a doc about a band that has such a long career, it’s a heavy lift and it took a lot of people to really rally behind it so we’re fortunate.
Speaking of making films, this premiered at SXSW in 2023 and then a few months later, The Good Half premiered at Tribeca.
Robert Schwartzman: Yeah.
Talk about balancing working on both of those films around the same time. What were those challenges like?
Robert Schwartzman: Colin, there’s another movie I directed called The Good Half. It’s a narrative scripted feature film that came out the next film festival after ours in that summer, so I was working on two movies at the same time.
Colin Blunstone: (Laughs)
Robert Schwartzman: But yeah, it’s totally different. I just like staying busy and working. I was going on the road with the bit with The Zombies and making music. All these things are happening at the same time. But it was really cool to have two films the same year at two major film festivals, totally different kinds of movies. One’s a documentary, one’s a scripted feature narrative. I was just happy that people have seen the movies. They like them. You just want to keep working and getting new stuff out.
When you make a documentary, I actually feel, with this movie, a little less pressure than with a scripted movie like The Good Half. Because with this movie, we’re telling the story about The Zombies. We’re celebrating their music and this is such a great artist.
I feel less pressure of like being judged or criticized as a filmmaker making a music documentary. Whereas, when I make a scripted movie, a piece of fiction or something, or with actors and a screenplay, I feel more vulnerable being criticized. With this movie, I actually feel less pressure because I feel like I’m just here as an audience member, watching this movie just like everyone else is and having a great time along the way
It’s totally different experience, actually. I feel protected by working alongside Colin and Rod and these awesome people.
What do you hope people take away from watching the film?
Colin Blunstone: Well, I hope it confirms some people who have followed The Zombies’ career that there were some wonderful songs recorded in the 60s and through the following years. Because since 1999, Rod Argent and myself have reformed a band which became known as The Zombies—a second incarnation of The Zombies, if you like—and we’ve recorded three or four albums.
I hope people discover those albums. I hope that people who have never heard The Zombies before will be introduced to this song as music, for the most part, written by Rod Argent and Chris White. Wonderful songs.
I hope that they get the pleasure of listening to those songs in the same way as I got the pleasure of performing them.
Robert Schwartzman: I feel this movie is a celebration of a band that I love very much and a lot of people do. I feel that I just want people to feel the same feeling I have, which is just like when I first heard the band as well, that what an incredible catalog of music—Colin, what an amazing voice. What an interesting history. What a great impact on the music industry and a lot of artists that followed. Just discovery of something very exciting. Great story. Great people. Great music.
It was so nice to meet the both of you and have a good weekend.
Colin Blunstone: Thank you very much.
Robert Schwartzman: Thanks for spreading the word.
Utopia released Hung Up on a Dream: The Zombies in theaters on May 12, 2025.
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